Pay-Per-Sale ----- you are paid a commission when a visitor clicks on a link or banner on your site, and then purchases a product on the merchant's site. For the most part you will find that per-sale programs will have high payouts . A big reason for this being that the merchant has actually brought in money from the sale so he gives you a cut.

Paying per sale is often seen as the payment model most favorable to advertisers and least favorable to publishers. In such an agreement, the publisher must not only be concerned with the quality and quantity of his or her audience, but also the quality of the advertiser's creative units and destination site. For advertisers,

pay per sale has some unique advantages compared to pay per click and pay per lead. There are fewer concerns about whether conversions are legitimate, and whether traffic is incentives or of low quality.

Pay-Per-Lead ------ you are paid a set amount for each visitor you send to the merchant's site that performs an action, such as joining their program, signing up for their newsletter, filling out a survey, etc.

Pay-per-lead programs are generally designed to promote some type of free service or product. An example would be Z Media's free email newsletter subscriptions or Call-Wave's free software download that allows users to monitor incoming calls while they are online. Since the merchant is mainly looking for a way to widely distribute their product or service, they are willing to pay you for each user, subscriber or member you attract. Generally these payments range from $0.05 to $20 for each 'action' taken by one of your referred visitors.

Let's take a look at a simple example, using some real data, but with program names changed to protect the innocent (and the guilty). Program A is pay-per-lead and pay $1 for each new user you refer to their free, downloadable software. Program B is pay-per-sale and pays about a $5 commission for a similar software product that costs $25. An affiliate decides to promote both to see which results in higher overall commissions. After two months of testing, the affiliate referred 200 new users to Program A, earning him $200. He also referred 30 new users to Program B, earning him $150. The affiliate decided to stay with program A for obvious reasons.

Pay-per-lead also lends itself to a wide variety of marketing strategies. Since you are offering your visitors or subscribers something they can receive for free, you can easily position ads for pay-per-lead offers as a valuable service to them. When done properly, you are adding value to your web site at the same time you are adding a revenue stream.

Pay-Per-Click------programs allow you to earn revenue from your web site by displaying banner ads for online merchants and web sites. With each program, you will earn a specific amount per click-through you send to their site. Maximizing revenue from these program will be dependent on two things-----increasing the amount of traffic to your site, and improving click-through ratios by finding ads that fit your visitor's interests.

When used as distinct terms, PPC indicates payment based on click-throughs, while CPC indicates measurement of cost on a per-click basis for contracts not based on click-throughs. For example, consider a campaign where payment is based on impressions, not clicks. Impressions are sold for $10 CPM with a click-through rate (CTR) of 2%. 1000 impressions x 2% CTR = 20 click-throughs , $10 CPM / 20 click-throughs = $.50 per click

Pay- Per-Impression-------affiliate programs pay you for every 'view' that an advertisement on your site receives. The rates pay per impression programs generally pay are on a CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) basis.

Pay per impression programs pay you on the basis of the number of ads you show rather than any other criteria required from the users side, like clicks, signups etc. Pay per impression are the safest mode o f advertisement. Which is :

1. Cheaper for the Advertiser (since the rates are low but are less reliable)

2. Quite reliable for Publisher but low paying. Publishers don't have to worry about clicks or sign-up.